Vote For Rape Apologist Apologist Todd Akin!

Republican representative Todd Akin (R-MO) got into some hot water yesterday when an interview clip went “viral” of him suggesting not only that some rapes are legitimate while other rapes are not legitimate (yikes) but also that when the rapes are legitimate a woman’s body naturally shuts down her reproductive proceses in reaction (no, this is not true) and therefore we should not even worry about the existence of babies as the product of rape or incest because if the woman’s body didn’t shut down then she probably in her heart of hearts wanted to make sweet love (and babies) with her horrifying and possibly related assailant. Guhhhhh. There have obviously been calls from both sides of the aisle for him to withdraw from his senate race. People on the left want him to withdraw because he’s an asshole, and people on the right want him to withdraw so he stops making the rest of them look like assholes. But far be it from someone who thinks that legitimate rape results in magical infertility to just give up his God-given quest to lead our nation to salvation. Instead, Todd Akin has made an apologetic campaign ad. It is pretty incredible, actually.

Well, first of all, no, Tracy Morgan. The mistake you made was absolutely not in the words you said. It’s not like this dude said, “rape is good” when he clearly meant “rape isn’t good.” That’s a thing that could happen! And a firestorm would still erupt even though everyone could tell from his inflection and other contextual clues that he clearly meant to say “isn’t” but just slipped up in the heat of the moment. Maybe he’s talking about the word “legitimate,” which OK, just to play devil’s advocate, we can say that he had some vague, ill-formed thought in his mind and he grasped at word straws and picked legitimate and it blew up in his face, and maybe we should give him the benefit of the doubt EXCEPT FOR THE PART WHERE he then went on to argue that WOMEN’S BODIES DON’T GET PREGNANT FROM “REAL” RAPES. So it’s no longer about word choice at that point is the problem here. I’m sure that Todd Akin doesn’t WANT everyone to GET raped, which seems to be what he is apologizing for, but no one was really arguing that. People were just arguing that you’re an over-privileged, misogynistic white man with absolutely no clue of what you are talking about who would be a potently dangerous person to put into a position of power for the future of our country. That’s all, buddy! Don’t even sweat it!

Oh man though how much do I love a campaign ad that basically says “I’m sorry for the terrible things I said about rape, and that is why you should vote for me.” I mean, that is what this is. That’s amazing! “My family knows that in my heart I don’t want my two teenage daughters to get raped, and that’s why I’m asking my fellow Missourians to vote Todd Akin for senate.” Incredible! (Similarly, I’m fascinated by the latest round of Romney ads that I can’t seem to find on-line but that suggest that Obama is a super great, totally chill dude that we all want to kiss on the mouth, but that doesn’t mean we should re-elect him for president, and that you can totally vote for Romney while still wishing you could just snuggle all night with America’s Sweetheart Barack Obama, that is totally something Romney understands and approves. That is a weird strategy! Weird and also losing!)

But the most important thing I even want to talk about here is did you hear what Mike Huckabee said?! It might be even worse than what Todd Akin said!! So, Mike Huckabee discussed the Todd Akin scandal on his XM Satellite Radio show or whatever the fuck he even does these days, and allowed the congressman to come on his show and apologize, and basically just attempted to make everything seem like it was being blown out of proportion and yet another example of the lamestream media twisting someone’s words in their mouth. SURE. FINE. Except then he went on to say that a lot of “admirable” people were born out of rape. “Ethel Waters, for example, was the result of a forcible rape,” Huckabee said. OH HOLY SHIT. So basically MORE people should get raped because think of all the great RANDOM GOSPEL SINGERS the world is missing!!!! More Rapes = More Friends. UNBELIEVABLE. How is THAT GUY not being forced to make apology videos? That is some horrible shit right there. That is just the worst shit ever. Take Back the Night might want to start thinking about opening a daytime chapter because it is getting SCARY out here.

Just so we’re clear, the GOP platform will call for the end of abortion with no exceptions for rape or incest (which, to be fair, is the logical conclusion to the illogical premise that abortion is killing a human life).

So Akin is getting called out for stating the soon-to-be official position of the GOP but getting the biology wrong. But Republicans don’t give a shit about biology since not understanding what a fetus is is why the GOP is opposed to abortion in the first place!

So wait, which is it, idiots? If you REALLY get raped you won’t get pregnant, or if you REALLY get raped you might have a cool kid who ends up being famous and not a spitting image of the monster that did that to you?

“People were just arguing that you’re an over-privileged, misogynistic white man…”

I know that whenever a white guy says something insensitive about minorities we have to mention that he’s white, because it’s relevant. But what does him being white have to do with this? Don’t get me wrong, I’m not claiming that us white guys have it hard. We don’t! We have it great! But just tossing the fact that he’s white in there as though that’s in and of itself a further damning piece of evidence seems kind of pointless and distracts from the real and terrible thing that he said. Isn’t him being a religiously-motivated misogynist enough? Every group has those!

“Hi I’m Mike Huckabee and I want to talk to you about kittens. You see, kittens are born of rape so violent the mother screams throughout it in pain. Maybe it’s the claws and teeth to her back or maybe it’s the backward facing spikes in the male’s penis. Or it could be that before she is mounted the male has to fight other cats, sometimes to death, making the intercourse an adrenaline-fueled cathartic burst of displaced animal anger. Anyways, my point is, why do liberals hate kittens so much?”

So, if Huckabee can argue that rape-fetuses shouldn’t be aborted because they might become cool famous people, can I use the same logic to say that non-rape-fetuses should be aborted because they might become, say, Hitler?

>>Ms. Barnes echoed Mr. Akin’s statement that very few rapes resulted in pregnancy, adding that “at that point, if God has chosen to bless this person with a life, you don’t kill it.”

“That’s more what I believe he was trying to state,” she said. “He just phrased it badly.”<<

A woman (A WOMAN!) defending him. The GOP, ugh. It'd be somewhat easy to write it off as "LOL GOP, you so crazy!" if there wasn't a very real chance that Republicans could take the Senate & the Presidancy, while keeping the House, topped off by conservative pundits & voters (hi Mom, love you, but you gotta turn off Fox News and the conservative radio idiots) gloating for the next 4 years. UGH.

Yesterday I learned that if you play wii Tennis for two and a half hours while drinking white wine and blasting Tina Turner, you can get rid of a few of your rage issues. Running helps, but hitting things very hard with a fake tennis racket is slightly more soothing. I mean, of course, I woke up to see this… but hitting fake things is really soothing.

Also, and I don’t want to brag, but you guys might not see me around these parts much longer. The wii suggested I become a pro bowler and I might take up the suggestion. Later jerks!

Here’s a nightmare hypothetical. What if one day it were discovered that life begins at conception? Fetuses feel pain, etc. Obviously, this would be an amazing boon for pro-lifers, but what would be the correct moral response to this discovery? I’ve thought about this before, because there was a time when I was anti-abortion because I held this belief (junior high). When do the rights of women end and the rights of unborn life begin?

Of course, anyone arguing that abortion should be illegal should also be 100% pro-contraception for all. Those two positions go hand in hand because we live in a sane society, right?

I’m late to the show, but I’m too fed up and compelled to vent, and this is a nice, quiet corner of the Internet in which to do so.

I’m a philosophy student (BOO!), and I’ve been focusing on intention and morality in the last year or so. One thing I had to work through was whether moral value is found in the act or the intention or both. I agree with Kant, in part, but also Duns Scotus and Peter Abelard, in that moral culpability is found only in intention – so a person’s guilt or merit is determined only by their intention (ex. If a car thief consented (decided) to steal a car but was then struck by lightning while approaching the car, he is no less guilty than a successful thief). BUT – I could not argue that moral value ends at intention.

I believe there is moral worth inherent in acts themselves. So, there is something inherently evil about rape. The act is evil. Even if, somehow, the rapist’s intention were something else (maybe because of ignorance, mental illness, whatever) the act itself would still be evil.

It’s so hard to deny that there is evil inherent in the act of rape. But, I can’t find or formulate any arguments that really, clearly conclude that. There’s so much dissection and precision in the comments here (and it’s pretty great. This is a bodacious Internet community), but I think the clearest affirmation of the evil in the act of rape is just the swell of fear and terror and indignation that rises in me when I think about the victim. I’ve never been in that position, but I have felt unsafe and threatened, and it feels so destructive, so negative. Chaos. It disturbs so much and leaves people helpless.

I think the evilness of rape is self-evident, but you have to contemplate the act itself (not the god damn precious “baby” contents (fetuses are not babies!)) to see that. To feel that. I don’t think Akin or Huckabee have ever done that. I appreciate that anti-choice people see abortion as a big, glaring self-evident evil in the same way I see rape. But why can’t they see the awful, stinking vileness of rape?

These shit-brained arguments that try to water down rape are disgusting, obviously. It’s like trying to water down a turd. Rape is a big evil turd. Fuck you, Huckabee.

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